Sunday, January 19, 2014

Five for Friday!!!

Thank you Doodle Bugs for this weekly wonderful way to connect and think randomly! Ha! My fav thing to do....

Here goes this week:

Best of all randomness this week I rearranged my craft nook and made it my TPT nook! Years ago, before the digital age hit us,I was very much a scrap-booker. I had ten tons of scrapbook supplies, embellishments, ribbon, papers, and twenty seven zillion containers for all that stuff. I spent hours making gorgeous scrapbooks of my children and they are priceless........then the digital scrapbook became available. Now, you upload pictures and make wonderful collections, bind them into books and so .....what do you do with all that leftover scrapbook stuff????

I boxed it up and turned by craft desk into an office desk...

That great printer in the picture belongs to hubs and it's his for printing amazing photos. Guess what else it prints in vivid color------task cards!!! This little corner is a work-in-progress (and if you focus really hard you can see Doodle Bugs website on the computer....)

Oh my goodness, I had a request from a Teachers Pay Teachers buyer to combine some things I have been working on and it made so much sense. It was also relatively easy so I squeezed together some combo packs.....

The first set is one I LOVE! It is also something I used in my classroom all the time! Kids are reading articles (I wrote them) from magazine pages! The magazine pages I designed have articles of varied lengths. They include graphics, tables, charts, graphs, and more. The set also includes differentiated task cards that ask basic comprehension questions, but also ask the students to identify non fiction text features.

The partner set has word wall strips about the Polar Regions, vocabulary flash cards, and graphic organizers for vocabulary.

The two are great separately, but also designed to work together!

Thank you to the buyer for suggesting this. There are two other combo packs as well! It has been really fun to develop these task cards sets.....working on a new one (in my new little office nook!)

My favorite moment of the week was the look on some faces when the expected outcome of an experiment did NOT occur. It was priceless--- true discovery and likely to be remembered....my fourth graders are learning about roller coasters. After much discussion of how potential energy turns into kinetic energy and only gravity makes a roller coaster car continue on its track, I posed this problem: What if the second hill of a roller coaster is taller than the first hill? Will it still work?

Here's a group trying the task- using a foam tube and marbles. Elaborate two hill designs were built and, sadly, none of them worked! We did, however, learn a ton! We even experimented with making the coasters have loops!

Speaking of task cards.....

Look at this mess:

You would think I have never laminated anything in my life. But I was at home, using the SUPER DUPER photo printer, and did not have any card stock. I could have used photo paper, but it's a little expensive, so I just used regular copy paper..... Glued it to construction paper.....laminated.....cut apart....

Threw AWAY..

and started over:

Much better, right?

So, here's a tutorial on laminating task cards:

1. Print on card stock.

2. Trim off the white edges.

3. Laminate.

4. Cut.

OR Just take it to STAPLES- they will do it all for you. For not much money.....

Here's my random Funny of the Week

and it made me laugh a lot and you will too, because we have ALL done this and we totally get it:

Thanks so much for the linky Doodle Bugs... Y'all have a great Monday off and a great week ahead!